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ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



32 



BALTIMORE 

APRIL 6 , 1918 




WASHINGTON 
1918 




p. of !)• 

i^PR 22 1913 



\^^,^lfc^ 



ADDRESS, 



Fellow Citizens: This is the anniversary of our acceptance of 
Germany's challenge to fight for our right to live and be free, and 
for the sacred rights of free men everywhere. The Nation is awake. 
There is no need to call to it. We know what the war must cost, 
our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest men and, if need be, all 
that we possess. The loan we are met to discuss is one of the least 
parts of what we are called upon to give and to do, though in itself 
imperative. The people of the whole country are alive to the neces- 
sity of it, and are ready to lend to the utmost, even where it involves 
a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. 
They will look with reprobation and contempt upon those who can 
and will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest, upon 
those who think of it as a mere commercial transaction. I have not 
come, therefore, to urge the loan. I have come only to give you, if 
T can, a more vivid conception of what it is for. 

The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had to come, 
the need to fight it through, and the issues that hang upon its out- 
come, are more clearly disclosed now than ever before. It is easy to 
see just what this particular loan means because the Cause we are 
fighting for stands more sharply revealed than at any previous crisis 
of the momentous struggle. The man who knows least can now see 
plainly how the cause of Justice stands and what the imperishable 
thing is he is asked to invest in. Men in America may be more sure 
than they ever were before that the cause is their own, and that, if it 
should be lost, their own great Nation's place and mission in the 
world would be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow countrymen, that at no stage of 
this terrible business have I judged the purposes of Germany in- 
temperately. I should be ashamed in the presence of affairs so grave, 
so fraught with the destinies of manldnd throughout all the world, 
to speak with truculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vin- 
dictive purpose. We must judge as we would be judged. I have 
sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war from the mouths 
of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with them as I wished 
them to deal with me. I have laid bare our own ideals, our own 
purposes, without resen^e or doubtful phrase, and have asked them 
to say as plainly what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. We are 
ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be just to the German 

51812—18 (3) 



4 

people, deal fairly with the German power, as with all others. 
There can be no difference between peoples in the final judgment, 
if it is indeed to be a righteous judgment. To propose anything but 
justice, even-handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany at any 
time, whatever the outcome of the war, would be to renounce and 
dishonour our own cause. For we ask nothing that we are not 
willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn from 
those who spoke for Germany whether it was justice or dominion 
and the execution of their own will upon the other nations of the 
Avorld that the German leaders were seeking. They have answered, 
answered in unmistakable terms. They have avowed that it was not 
justice but dominion and the unhindered execution of their own will. 

The avowal has not come from Germany's statesmen. It has come 
from her military leaders, who are her real rulers. Her statesmen 
have said that they wished peace, and were ready to discuss its terms 
whenever their opponents were willing to sit down at the conference 
table with them. Her present Chancellor has said, — in indefinite 
and uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often seem to deny 
their own meaning, but with as much plainness as he thought pru- 
dent, — that he believed that peace should be based upon the principles 
which we had declared would be our own in the final settlement. At 
Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in similar terms; pro- 
fessed their desire to conclude a fair peace and accord to the peoples 
with whose fortunes they were dealing the right to choose their own 
allegiances. But action accompanied and followed the profession. 
Their military masters, the men who act for Germany and exhibit 
her purpose in execution, proclaimed a very different conclusion. 
We can not mistake what they have done, — in Eussia, in Finland, in 
the Ukraine, in Rumania. The real test of their justice and fair 
play has come. From this we may judge the rest. They are enjoying 
in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation can 
long take pride. A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for 
the time at their mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. They 
nowhere set up justice, but everywhere impose their poAver and ex- 
ploit everything for their own use and aggrandizement; and the 
peoples of conquered provinces are invited to be free under their 
dominion ! 

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the same 
things at their western front if they were not there face to face with 
armies whom even their countless divisions can not overcome? If, 
when they have felt their check to be final, they should propose fa- 
vourable and equitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and 
Italy, could they blame us if we concluded that they did so only to 
assure themselves of a free hand in Russia and the East? 



Tlieir purpose is undoubtedly to make all the Slavic peoples, all 
the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands 
that Turkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will and 
ambition and build upon that dominion an empire of force upon 
which they fanc}'^ that they can then erect an empire of j>ain and 
commercial supremacj^, — an empire as hostile to the Americas as to 
the Europe which it will overawe, — an empire which will ultimately 
master Persia. India, and the peoples of the Far East. In such a 
programme our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity and lib- 
erty, the principle of the free self-determination of nations upon 
which all the modern world insists, can play no part. They are 
rejected for the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong 
must rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those 
to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples of the world 
are to be made subject to the patronage and overlordship of those 
who have the power to enforce it. 

That programme once carried out, America and all who care or 
dare to stand with her must arm and prepare themselves to contest 
the mastery of the World, a mastery in which the rights of common 
men, the rights of women and of all who are weak, must for the 
time being be trodden under foot and disregarded, and the old, age- 
long struggle for freedom and right begin again at its beginning 
Eveiything that America has lived for and loved and grown great 
to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization will have fallen in 
utter ruin and the gates of mercy once more pitilessly shut upon 
mankind ! 

The thing is preposterous and impossible ; and yet is not that what 
the whole course and action of the German armies has meant where- 
ever they have moved ? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter 
disillusionment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only 
what the German arms have accomplished with unpitying thorough- 
ness throughout every fair region they have touched. 

What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am ready, re a d}^ still, 
ready even now, to discuss a fair and just' and honest peace at any 
time that it is sincerely purposed, — a peace in which the strong and 
the weak shall fare alike. But the answer, when I proposed such 
a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia, and I cannot 
mistake the meaning of the answer. 

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world 
shall know that you accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice and 
self-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and all 
that we have to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like 
ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do.. Let 
everything that we say, my fellow countrymen, everything that we 
henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till the 



majesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought and 
utterly defeat the force of those who flout and misprize v/hat we 
honour and hold dear. Germany has once more said that force, and 
force alone, shall decide whether Justice and peace shall reign in the 
affairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Dominion 
as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There 
is, therefore, but one response possible from us : Force, Force to the 
utmost. Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant 
Force which shall make Eight the law of the world, and cast every 
selfish dominion down in the dust. 



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